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A MAZE.
A MAZE. is an international label in the field of games and playful media Interdisciplinary, game-centered events and productions transcending media channels and cultures are the signature feature of A MAZE.
With our events we foster authorship in games, creating multidisciplinary networks and highlighting artistic expression with the medium of the 21. century. #AMaze2019
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We are very happy to announce 20 game makers who are selected for the train ride to Playtopia in Cape Town on the 2nd A MAZE. Train Jam South Africa.
But first of all thank you to all submitters. You are amazing ! We had this year more than 50 submissions, which is more as double as much compared to last years call.
So congratulation to all the selected participants! Please find your names below. You get soon a seperate message with all the travel details, times and appointments from us in next day. So get prepared and organise your stuff! Please prebook the early evening of November 30 for the #amazetrainjam kick-off reception at Goethe-Institut Johannesburg.
Ruben Van der Merwe
Christiaande Jager
Ashleigh Jesse Alexander
Faheem Moolla
Duncan Smale
Marius Schutte
Athi Musoke
Azra Parker
Ryan Ka Kit Leong
Neo Pako Ramathinyane
Dhannya Mathew
Angus Bezemer
Estelle Makhoba
Stephan Calitz
Claudio Surmon
Dale Deacon
Andrew Grey
Joshua Shneier
Kushal Sithlu
Sherilynne Herb
If you are are not selected there is still the chance to get some of the rare and limited A MAZE. Train Jam tickets. This ticket includes: the licence to with us on the train, a unique A MAZE. Train Jam t-shirt, presentation of your game at the hypertalks, being part of the exhibition, and getting the full festival pass to Playtopia for a 50% discount. Wooohooo! Choo Choo!
Link via eventbrite: https://amazetrainjam2.eventbrite.com
This event on rails is organised by A MAZE. in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Johannesburg and supported by Playtopia.
If you have any questions about the event please contact us on [email protected].
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A MAZE. / BERLIN 2019. Award Winners
The 8th edition of A MAZE. / Berlin 2019 – International Games and Playful Media Festival welcomed international professionals, digital artists, game developers, journalists, labels and visitors – to be continued on Saturday, April 13th. There were more than 40 participating nations and more than 100 games and playful media installations at the festival.
The highlight of the festival: the new location (SEZ) & the 8th International
A MAZE. Awards are chosen by the international and multidisciplinary jury:
· Anita Sarkeesian (USA)
· Nina Kiel (Germany)
· Adriaan de Jongh (Netherlands)
· Peter Lee (South Korea)
· Vít Šisler (Czech Republic)
MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE JURY:
https://amazestuff.tumblr.com/post/183030941519/jury-members-of-the-a-maze-awards-2019
8th International A MAZE. Awards –
the winners are...
Most Amazing Game Award:
Kassinn (Iceland) – Huldufugl / http://huldufugl.is/kassinn
The jury: In most games with actors, they are noticed in cutscenes. Kassinn takes a very different approach and takes out the code for NPCs. It doesn't feel like talking to a machine because you are not. In adding actors to a singleplayer VR environment, Huldufugl transformed their work into a new kind of multiplayer that we could only describe as live theater gaming.
Human Human Machine Award:
Blabyrinth (Canada) – Sleeping Beast Games / http://blabyrinth.com
The jury: Blabyrinth uses mobiles as a platform for analog communication. The experience of being together in a multi-room escape room, screaming for help, discussing solutions, and putting your heads together to collect clues to make it through the randomized puzzles is all about structuring chaos. Blabyrinth is the definition of a game played between humans with some help from a machine.
Digital Moment Award:
Consume Me (USA) – Jenny Jiao Hsia & AP Thomson / http://playconsume.me
The jury: It is impossible to balance life. Consume Me makes this perfectly clear and raises a bold statement about the pressure of society. By combining hundreds of little things into a big narrative, packaging it into a beautiful style with challenging physicality, it brings this topic to very different audiences. It's OK to fail. It's normal. Don't fear.
Long Feature Award:
:THE LONGING: (Germany) – STUDIO SEUFZ /
http://www.399d-23h-59m-59s.com/
The jury: Idle games are often about waiting. :The Longing: manages to make it about anticipation instead, focusing on narrative experiences, which use time wisely and being patient as a game mechanic. It's not about the many days you have to spend until the end, it's about what you can do until that moment.
Explorer Award:
Operation Jane Walk (Austria) – Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel / http://leonhardmuellner.at/operation-janewalk/
The jury: In our time, we saw a lot of beautiful and detailed gameworlds, which were just used as containers for combat mechanics. Operation Jane Walk says "No!" - With voice acting, sound samples and whatever their virtual combat-avatars can express, they used an existing and live multiplayer game for a fun, educational guided tour for other players, making this noninteractive game somehow feel extremely interactive. We want more tours to all of our favorite worlds!
Audience Award:
Sticky Cats (South Africa) – The Bones Brothers / http://stickycatsgame.com/
Sticky Cats is a fumblecore party game in which each player controls a sticky cat with a craving for fish. Players must traverse a house, steal a fish, and make a dash for the exit while sticking to everything and causing mayhem along the way.
Humble New Talent Award:
lowpolis (Russian Federation) - Maria Fedotova, Danila Yakovlev https://lowpolis.itch.io
The jury: All five developers/teams have shown great talent with their work and should be on everyone's radar: 5am Games (Switzerland), lowpolis (Russian Federation), Moshe Linke (Germany), Project.99 (South Korea), and Simona Maiorano (Italy).
We chose Maria Fedotova and Danila Yakovlev from lowpolis as winners of this years Humble New Talent Award because we are excited about their small games about queerness and general friendship between humans. They’re also about secrecy, hiding, and censorship. Although they look very polished, they are still very experimental and bring their voice and perspective in all kinds of forms to the games community. We are excited to highlight this emerging team and look forward to what they will achieve with the power of Humble Bundle.
The Humble New Talent Award rewards a deserving emerging artist from the A MAZE. community. This award is an opportunity to highlight new global talents, whose work have created a buzz over the last year. The winner of the award receives an exclusive deal to create a Humble Original and $15,000 in prize money. Thanks to these important collaborations, A MAZE. and Humble Bundle hope to support the creation and accomplishment of a-mazing future projects.
(picture with Award Winners that were at the ceremony, the team behind Sticky Cats and Operation Jane Walk and team Lowpolis were not there)
All the nominees for the A MAZE. Award:
https://2019.award.amaze-berlin.de/games/nominees
All the nominees for the Humble New Talent Award:
https://amazestuff.tumblr.com/post/183215822984/congratulation-to-the-nominees-for-the-2nd-humble
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Knowledge Bazaar at A Maze. / Berlin 2019
Do you consider yourself an expert, a wiz or more than knowledgeable in games and playful media, or in any other field of human activity that the A MAZE. crowd might benefit from? Come and share your expertise with those who might need it at the Knowledge Bazaar, an expert clinic in the festival's usual spirit of camaraderie and solidarity. It'll be fun, comfy, and you'll do some good work!
If you wanna be a friendly expert, tell us how you could help people in an email to [email protected]
The Knowledge Bazaar happens on Thursday, April 11 from 15:00 to 17:00 and you should already have a ticket for the festival in order to participate.
The full schedule for the festival: https://amazeberlin2019.sched.com/
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A collaborative new language for poems, invented by visitors to Now Play This and A MAZE. / Berlin
A chance to create a universal, collaborative, chaotic glyph language for making poetry. Participants add their own new abstract glyphs to an ever-expanding database, write their own poems in the collective glyph language, and view other poems. A hand-picked collaboration between Harry Josephine Giles (UK) and bleeptrack (DE), co-commissioned with London based festival Now Play This. The glyph dictionary and poems will be added to and shared by visitors to both festivals. Now Play This is a festival of experimental game design running at Somerset House in London from 6-14 April 2019, showcasing interactive and playful work as part of the London Games Festival. They show digital and physical work that has play at its heart. In 2019, Now Play This is themed around community and communities: games which portray particular communities, communities which come together around making games, even games that create communities around them.
Harry Josephine Giles is from Orkney, Scotland, and is a writer and performer. They have lived on four islands, each larger than the last. Their work generally happens in the crunchy places where performance and politics get muddled up. bleeptrack is a computer scientist from Germany who makes generative art, games, videos, podcasts, and many other things.
@harrygiles
@bleeptrack
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Congratulation to the A MAZE. Award 2019 Nominees and Honorable Mentions
“The A MAZE. is a place of inspiration for game makers, digital artists, and creatives who are exploring playful systems for their future projects. In this sense it is important to us to present an artistic and forward-thinking exhibition
of playful media as a whole, that includes games, immersive experiences and narratives, interactive art installations, and other mind-boggling projects on the fringe of play.“, says artistic director Thorsten S. Wiedemann
The submitters’ work ranges from all kinds of playful media, which underline the A MAZE. Awards categories. 25 games will compete in the following 6 categories:
Most Amazing Game Award
Human Human Machine Award
Long Feature Award
Digital Moment Award
Explorer Award
Audience Award
THE NOMINEES:
:THE LONGING: by STUDIO SEUFZ
0_abyssalSomewhere by Nonoise
A_DESKTOP_LOVE_STORY by Alienmelon
Anyball by Team Anyball
Be B:E:R:N:D by MASO HfS Ernst Busch
Bird Alone by George Batchelor, Eli Rainsberry, Allissa Chan
Blabyrinth by Sleeping Beast Games
Consume Me by Jenny Jiao Hsia & AP Thomson
Fantastic Fetus by Fantastic Humans
The Wanderer: Frankenstein’s Creature by La Belle / ARTE France
HanaHana Full Bloom by Mélodie Mousset
Horses by Andrea Lucco Borlera
Kassinn by Huldufugl
Locus Solus by Dream Adoption Society
macdows 95 by Yunus AYYILDIZ
Mundaun by Michel Ziegler
Operation Jane Walk by Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel
STATIC by Elijah Cauley and Amit Rai Sharma
Sticky Cats by The Bones Brothers
The Game: The Game by Angela Washko
The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game by Grace Bruxner, Thomas Bowker, Dan Golding
To Call a Horse a Deer by Yuk-Yiu Ip
VM - Virtual Materialism by Jens Isensee & Rico Possienke
WORLD4 by Alexander Muscat
Wrong Box by Molly Soda and Aquma
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
After HOURS by Team after HOURS
Haunted Garage by Games For Ghosts
Laser Mazer AR/VR by Mighty Coconut
Mosh Pit Simulator by Sos Sosowski
Pixel Picasso by Happy Volcano
Small Talk by Pale Room
The Book Ritual by Alistair Aitcheson
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Congratulation to the nominees for the 2nd Humble New Talent Award powered by Humble Original .
A MAZE. is thrilled that the Humble New Talent Award goes into the second round. 2018 Bahiyya Khan from Johannesburg won the prize and finished her game afterHours. The Humble New Talent Award is a collaboration with Humble Bundle that will be honored for the second time at this year’s A MAZE. / Berlin 2019 – 8th International Games and Playful Media Festival.
The Humble New Talent Award will reward a deserving emerging artist from the A MAZE. community. This award is an opportunity to highlight new global talents, whose work have created a buzz in the last year. We are proud to nominate the following creators for the second Humble New Talent Award:
lowpolis (Russian Federation)
5am Games (Switzerland)
Moshe Linke (Germany)
Project.99 (South Korea)
Simona Maiorano (Italy)
These artists have shown great potential with their work and definitely stood out this year.
Every year, A MAZE. strives to grow this community by welcoming game developers, digital artists, and activists from all horizons. It is a chance for new talents to meet their peers, hence fostering the community’s development and ensuring that the program continues to address relevant and cutting-edge issues. As a truly international festival, A MAZE. has become a platform for new voices to speak out, inspire others, and contribute to the world of global independent games and playful media.
The winner of the award will receive an exclusive deal to create a Humble Original. Thanks to these important collaborations, A MAZE. and Humble Bundle hope to support the creation and accomplishment of a-mazing future projects.
The winner will be announced during the A MAZE. / Berlin 2019 Award Show on Friday, April 12th at 8 p.m. The Award Show will be hosted at SEZ by Tim Rogers and TsiTsi Chiumya, who will also reveal another six winners from the A MAZE. / Berlin Awards.
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First wave of artists announced, early bird festival tickets are running out!
The conference program will run from April 10 to 13, 2019. Three days packed with high-class talks about game development, other realities, and playful media, as well as workshops about artistic expression, deep narratives, socio-critical and political engagement. A diverse group of artists from around the world will inspire a professional audience to foster authorship and experimental approaches in games and playful media. Here’s the first batch of confirmed artists:
Adriaan de Jongh (NL)
Anita Sarkeesian (US)
Anthea Moys (SA)
Dietrich Squinkifer (CA)
Elie Abraham (FI)
Frederik Lassen (DK)
Gwen Foster (PH)
Jelena Viskovic (HU)
Kirsten-Lee Naidoo (SA)
Nicole He (US)
Nina Kiel (DE)
Peter Lee (KR)
Robert Yang (US)
TsiTsi Chiumya (SA)
Vit Sisler (CZ)
Zoyander Street (UK)
Early bird tickets are available until March 4, 2019. The second wave of artists will be announced on March 10th as well as the music line up.
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Jury members of the A MAZE. Awards 2019
Please welcome our jury members of the 8th A MAZE. Awards in Berlin. All 5 jury members will select the winning works in 6 categories including the new Explorer Award. On March 4 we will officially announce the nominees and the honorable mentions.
Anita Sarkeesian (United States of America)
Anita Sarkeesian is a prominent and award-winning media critic and host. Her work deconstructs the stereotypes attached to women in popular culture and exposes the harassment of women online and in gaming spaces.
Nina Kiel (Germany)
is a games journalist, researcher and developer from Germany. As an expert on gender roles and sexuality in digital games, she’s a regular guest at conferences and has published numerous articles on these topics. She also works for Germany’s most popular gaming podcast: “The Pod”.
Adriaan de Jongh (Netherlands)
is a game designer best known for indie game hit Hidden Folks,
a hand-drawn interactive searching game, and for experimental games
like Bounden and Fingle, which move people out of the normal space of
videogames by challenging players to dance, hold hands, and share
physical interactions.
Peter Lee (South Korea)
is a game designer. He was born in Korea and moved to New York when he was 19. In 1996, He started his career at TIME magazine as a new media designer, since than he has worked for various media companies in NYC until he found gameLab with Eric Zimmerman, a game development studio known for one of the most popular casual games of its time ‘Diner Dash’. He cofounded a big game festival ‘Come Out & Play’ in 2006 with Greg Trefry and three other game designers. He also helped start Institute of Play, a non-profit organization that designed a game like school Quest To Learn.
After twenty years in NYC, he moved back to Seoul in 2011, started the “big game” design studio Nolgong. Korea and Germany as a main hub, he is working all around world. One of hig big game project based on Classic literature “Being Faust - Enter Mephisto” (in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Korea) was launched in fall 2014 and has been traveling around the world since then. In 2019 WALLPECKERS- from the DMZ to the Berlin Wall has launched in Seoul and Berlin, a game experience connecting 70 years history of division and unification on two cities.
Vít Šisler (Czech Republic)
is a lead game designer of the award-winning game Attentat 1942. He is also an Assistant Professor of New Media Studies at Charles University, where he focuses on video games and digital media.
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Hi stoners, How are you?
Last year in November I’ve (Thorsten) invited Paloma Dawkins to join the A MAZE. Cape Town Pop Up at Playtopia in Cape Town. Paloma is working and has released some really trippy VR and game projects. With her art-style, mindtwisting game mechanics she created her own unique signature as game maker and digital artist. So Paloma and I took a taxi from Thambo Airport in Johannesburg to Bannister Hotel (official A MAZE. Hotel) in Braamfontain. On the way to the hotel... it’s a 30min ride and costs 300ZAR (fyi) we’ve been chatting about future projects and Paloma came up with this brilliant idea of making a stoner arcade filled with games for stoners only. Me, a drug positive personality got totally hooked to that idea, I want that to get reality. Since then it became a running thing between us all over the place during the Train Jam SA, during Playtopia and until now!
Now a few months later and before the A MAZE. / Berlin 2019 - April 10-13, 2019 we wanna make that stoner paradise reality and tease you with our 3rd
A MAZE. Game Jam.
Paloma Dawkins, Gianluca Pandolfo and Thorsten S. Wiedemann want to invite you to the “Games That Only Make Sense Playing When You Are Stoned Jam” which will be held online from March 15-31, 2019 . All the submitted games will be legally showcased at A MAZE. / Berlin 2019.
All details soon as usual.
For preparation:
https://www.ganjapreneur.com/stoner-phrases/
/
Thanks to all participants and to the co-organizers Gianluca Pandolfo and Adriel Beaver of the last two A MAZE. game jams .
Watermelon Jam 2017: https://itch.io/jam/melon-game-jam
Out of the Frame Jam 2018: https://itch.io/jam/out-of-the-frame
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Dear A MAZE. friends,
A MAZE. / Berlin 2019 is looking for support! The 8th international games and playful media festival will bring together independent game developers, artists, and musicians from all over the world to Berlin, to present their work, compete for the six awards, and celebrate the greatness of independent games.
We are looking for reliable and responsible game lovers for the following tasks for the festival from April 10-13, with work happening April 8-14.
Set up of the exhibition, press conference, workshop spaces
Cashiers at the ticket counter
Supervising and providing information to attendees at the conference, workshop and exhibition spaces
Dismantling exhibition, conference and workshops spaces
Assistance to our main staff, i.e. helping out with the award show
Important: we’re looking for a minimum commitment of 13 hours spent over 2 days!
In exchange for your help, you’ll receive a full access festival ticket, a unique team t-shirt, and food/drinks during work hours. You will be part of a great team and have the possibility to network with amazing people in the game culture scene from all over the world.
If you’re interested, please apply via the volunteers form:
https://goo.gl/forms/RcCeQoRUTOj149yR2
You can find information about the festival at http://amaze-berlin.de .
If you have any questions, please get in touch by writing an email to [email protected] .
Best,
Your A MAZE. Team
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Hyper Talks on Tour at Ludicious Festival in Zurich.
We are super happy that the A MAZE. Hyper Talks – a 5 minutes open minded talk format, established back in 2014 – will be part of the Ludicious Festival in Zurich. It's a starting point of a content partnership between Ludicious Festival and A MAZE. / Berlin. Our program manager Lorenzo Pilia will host the show on Thursday January 31st at 7:30pm.
Expect 10 delightful, thoughtful and also humorous talks. That’s a very promising line-up. (artist info via Ludicious website)
Bertine van Hövell (NL)
Natalie Clayton (UK)
Philipp Stollenmayer (DE)
Malo Dalmier (FR)
Tabea Iseli (CH)
Aaron Abt (CH)
Alice Ruppert (CH)
Asema Hassan (PK)
Charlotte Brocard (CH)
Nick Zhang (CN)
If you are an event organizer and would like to book "Hyper Talks" to your event programme just get in contact with us ([email protected]). The Hyper Talks were already presented at tech and game events in Abu Dhabi, Pristina, Johannesburg, Copenhagen and Berlin.
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Get a stand and become part of the A MAZE. Village
The A MAZE. Village is an opportunity of presenting games and services during the 3 days A MAZE. / Berlin festival which won’t be part of the official selection and competition of the A MAZE. awards. Make appointments with the press, meet publishers and funding institutions and get value out of our easy-going way of creating a market place for arthouse games, VR and playful media productions in the field of visual and performing arts.
One Game stand (1 Game)
€500.00 includes 2 tickets, Table, Chairs, Power, hang Poster, do decoration
Publisher stand (4 Games) - 10qm
€1,500.00 includes 4 tickets, Table, Chairs, Power, hang Poster, do decoration
Country stand (4 Games) - 10qm
€1,500.00 includes 4 tickets, Table, Chairs, Power, hang Poster, do decoration
Company/ Institution stand (4 Games) - 10qm
€2,000.00 includes 4 tickets, Table, Chairs Power, hang Poster, do decoration
School stand (4 Games) - 10qm
€1,000.00 includes 2 tickets, Table, Chairs, Power, hang Poster, do decoration
For details just write us: [email protected]
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2nd Humble New Talent Award
A MAZE. is excited to announce for A MAZE. / Berlin 2019 – 8th International Games and Playful Media Festival the continuation of the partnership with Humble Bundle to have the second Humble New Talent Award. The award seeks to honor aspiring game developers from around the world.
Outside of the competing nominees, the Humble New Talent Award highlights important new voices in the culture and art of games. Nominees are choosen by
A MAZE.. The winner of the award will receive an exclusive deal to create a Humble Original with the $15,000 in prize money.
Winner 2018
Bahiyya Khan (SA) - Gametitle: afterHours
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Audience Award
The winner will be voted out of the 25 nominees by the public during the course of the festival. Every visitor gets 3 pink dots to vote for their favourite game at A MAZE. / Berlin.
Submission link 2019
Winner 2018 Wobble Garden by Robin Barumgarten
Winner 2017 VinylOS by Josef Who? and Jonas Bo! (AT)
Winner 2016 Genital Jousting: A MAZE. Grand Prize Winning Game by Team Swaffelen (NO/ZA)
Winner 2015 Line Wobbler by Robin Baumgarten (DE)
Winner 2014 Choosatron by Jerry Belich (US)
Learn more about the other categories
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Digital Moment Award (1000€)
Poems, statements, experiments, short experiences – expressions of socio-critical messages, personal or comedic life situations and feelings through an interactive medium. Maybe a sensual mechanic, a toy that gives the player a surprising twist in their experience.
Submission link 2019
Winner 2018
Genital Jousting - Story Mode by Free Lives (SA)
Winner 2017
Everything is going to be OK by Nathalie Lawhead (US)
Learn more about the other categories
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Long Feature Award (1000€)
Poems, statements, experiments, short experiences – expressions of socio-critical messages, personal or comedic life situations and feelings through an interactive medium. Maybe a sensual mechanic, a toy that gives the player a surprising twist in their experience.
Submission link 2019
Winner 2018
The Norwood Suite by Cosmo D (US)
Winner 2017
Orwell by Osmotic Studio (DE)
Learn more about the other categories
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Human Human Machine Award (1000€)
This award goes to the best game that can be played by two or more people in the same room (local multiplayer), and includes some digital element – fully analog games won’t be accepted.
Submission link 2019
Winner 2018
Tuned Out by Shallow Games (US)
Winner 2017
Word After Word by Jonah Warren (US)
Winner 2016
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes by Steel Crate Games, Inc. (CA)
Winner 2015
Crawl by Powerhoof (AU)
Winner 2014
Nidhogg by Messhof (US)
Learn more about the other categories
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